1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a band cutting machine for cutting a tubular article such to produce at least one band therefrom, which band cutting machine includes a frame; a rotating cutting means supported by the frame and having at least one rotating cutting member intended to cut such tubular article into at least one band and having further a driving means operative to rotate the cutting member; a rotatably mounted supporting turntable intended to support a supply of a folded or rolled tubular article to be cut; a drive motor coupled to the supporting turntable and operative to rotate the turntable at a controlled rotational speed; an article feeding and rotating means operative to continuously feed the tubular article towards the cutting means in a spread out condition by drawing the fabric off the turntable and simultaneously inducing a horizontal rotary movement of the tubular article whereby the tubular article is fed continuously towards the cutting means.
Such tubular article may be a hoselike article of an extruded plastic material or an elastomeric material such as rubber, may be a woven textile article or a knitted textile material such as a circular knitted fabric.
The cutting means may include a band saw apparatus, a crush-knife apparatus or a cutting knife apparatus having at least one pair of cooperating circular rotating knives forming the cutting members. Accordingly, the cutting member supporting shafts may be knife supporting shafts.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Such band cutting machines are commonly employed to cut from a tubular article a band or ribbon, respectively, or to cut simultaneously a plurality of bands from such tubular article. Such tubular article, e.g. a circular knitted fabric is an extremely limp article which may be more or less elastic. Moreover, such articles may indeed be of an elastic material which is cut into elastic bands by band cutting machines.
Quite obviously the width of the bands cut by band cutting machines should be continuously equal throughout the entire length of such band. This task is sought to be accomplished by means of a variety of structural designs of such band cutting machines. It has been, however, practically impossible to achieve bands having a continuous equal width within fractions of inches. The reason for this difficulty is on the one hand the structure of the tubular article being cut. As mentioned above it is a rather limp and partly or entirely elastic article. On the other hand the band cutting machine is a combination of various functional units, namely in general the turntable on which such tubular article is initially placed in a folded or rolled condition, the unit which spreads the tubular article out to a more or less circular or polygonal state combined with a drive member feeding the tubular article towards a cutting means, e.g. the knives by inducing a rotary as well as a longitudinal movement on the tubular article and finally the cutting means itself. It is now obviously quite important that the forces exerted on the tubular article should be as little as possible to avoid any distortion or deformation, respectively, thereof, which would lead to nonuniform widths of the band cut and, furthermore, the various units should cooperate closely with each other in that they are closely controlled.
The width of a band or ribbon, respectively, which is cut by the circular knives is known to have been controlled in that a feeling means scanned the upper rim or edge of the tubular article, which feeling means controlled a unit responsible for the longitudinal feeding of the tubular article such that an increase or a decrease of the feeding motion was governed by such feeler and the cutting members of the cutting means were supported in fixed bearings. Since a certain time lag prevails between the determining of a given position of the upper edge of the tubular article and that area of the article contacting the cutting member, errors regarding the cut width of the band have prevailed in the commonly known band cutting machines.